But wind and sea were too strong, and presently again we saw the
shore marks shifting, and we knew that there was no hope. The ship must
touch the ground sooner or later, and then the end would come with one
last struggle in the surf, and on shore was no man whose hand might be
stretched to drag a spent man to the land, if he won through. It would
have seemed less lonely had one watched us, but I did not know then that
no pity for the wrecked need be looked for from the marshmen of the
Lindsey shore. There was not so much as a fisher's boat of wicker and
skins in sight on the sandhills, where one might have looked to see some
drawn up.
Now my father went to the cabin and told my mother that things were at
their worst, and she was very brave.
"If you are to die at this time, husband," she said, "it is good that I
shall die with you. Better it is, as I think, than a sickness that comes
to one and leaves the other. But after that you will go to the place of
Odin, to Valhalla; but I whither?"
Then spoke little Withelm, ever thoughtful, and now not at all afraid.
"If Freya wants not a sailor's wife who is willing to fight the waves
with Grim, my father, it will be strange."
My mother was wont to say that this saying of the child's did much to
cheer her at that time, but there is little place for a woman in the old
faiths.
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